Third Sunday in Lent
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Year C
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Sermon Audio: March 7, 2010-The Rev’d Warren Hicks
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Second Sunday in Lent
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Year C
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Sermon Audio-February 28, 2010 The Rev’d Warren Hicks
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
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First Sunday in Lent |
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Year C
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Sermon Audio-8 am Service February 21, 2010
Sermon Audio-Children’s Sermon 10 am February 21, 2010
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Tags: Jesus, Lent, Temptation
Finally, beloved,* whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about* these things. 9Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.–Philippians 4:8-9
It has been said, and I believe it to be true, that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” That being said, it seems that today’s text from Paul’s letter to the struggling church in Philippi is a clarion call to flatter Jesus by doing our best impression of him that we can muster.
I don’t suspect that it matters if our mimicry is excellent and indistinguishable from the original, I have a pretty strong hunch that it’s mainly the thought that counts here.
To imitate someone means that we’ve paid attention to them. That we’ve found their demeanor, mannerisms and character, sufficiently interesting to give them our attention and to try and take some of them on as a part of our persona.
Thomas a Kempis talks about this in the classic ‘The Imitation of Christ’. To imitate Jesus is at the heart of ‘being Christian’. Which literally means to be like Christ.
Paul lays before us a comforting promise in this text that we need to keep practicing our imitation and if we stay faithful to that effort that we’ll find peace as a constant companion on the road of discipleship.
I don’t know about you, but peace sounds like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for me in the uncertainty of the world. It’s a treasure I’m willing to chase, I hope you’ll chase it too.
Tags: Imitation of Christ, Jesus, Peace
6As we work together with him,* we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2For he says, ‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’ See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!–2 Corinthians 6:1-2
This reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is part of every Ash Wednesday in our Episcopal tradition. When read as the bridge between either of the Old Testament readings and Matthew’s Jesus call to a quiet piety during Lent, we have a link between action and contemplation. It is this link that I’m coming to believe that helps us live into the call in the Ash Wednesday Liturgy to the ‘keeping of a Holy Lent’
Isaiah 58:1-12 strikes a great counterbalance to Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 in calling us to pay attention to the needs of others and the world in Isaiah and a commitment to personal piety, sanctification and dare I say, divinization. What is before us is the invitation to live a life of action and contemplation in the present.
When I was younger and would say that, “I ought to do x” or “I want to do y”, I’d often hear, “now’s as good a time as any.” Sometimes Lent can become an excuse to postpone ministry and response to the world and its needs in favor of a commitment to personal reflection and piety. These Ash Wednesday texts seem to say that we are not living in a time of either/or, but rather that the keeping of a Holy Lent is a both/and proposition.
We go to our Lord in private and He hears the laments of our souls and the desires of our hearts and then we are equipped by that exercise to act in the name of God by the Power of the Spirit in the ways that are ours to do. And now’s as good a time as any to start!!!
On this Ash Wednesday, may we all learn to accept, embrace and celebrate and actively contemplative discipleship of Jesus, the Holy One of God. And now’s as good a time as any to start!
